The Nightmare City
by Noyemi
Summary: Lizaveta Nazanyan and Lucas Mikierr have read the stories in the papers. Heard them on the news. Animal attacks on hikers in the woods and strange murders on the outskirts of the city. After bearing witness to the horror for herself during the Sharks vs. Thunders football game, the next few days becomes a struggle to survive—and hopefully escape—the horror engulfing Raccoon City.
1. Prelude to the Nightmare

**-Author's Notes-**

_Welcome, dear reader, to _**The Nightmare City**_! A story of terror in the City of Raccoon, starring original characters Lizaveta Nazanyan and Lucas Mikierr. A few things:_

_-Canon characters aren't intended to make any appearances throughout this story. So please don't write a review and mark me points off for not having canon characters or your favourite pairings or whatever—the last thing I want is to have one of those situations where it's like "Hey, my OC's friends with Leon!" or whatever. The point of this is to take a fairly well-researched look at our favourite apocalyptic event from the viewpoint of some ordinary college students... of course, no one comes out of a Nightmare as an ordinary person anymore!_

_-Chapters will be broken up into sections based on tasteful timeskips to keep from recounting every boring action. -1-, -1.5-, -3.5-, etc._

_-Author's notes from the next chapter on will be at the end of the chapter, until all of the chapters are finished. Then I might remove them and place the relevant notes at the end of the story._

* * *

The cheering of the crowd rose to a roar as the Raccoon Sharks scored another point over the Old Court Thunders. The gap in the scores widened from the early game, where they seemed evenly matched.

Lucas nearly leapt from his seat. "Yeah! Teach those Old Court fuckers! Go Sharks! Sixteen to four and it's not even halftime!"

His friend Lizaveta—the diminutive mess of brown curls and a smart fur-trimmed fall coat—leaned forward to get a better look at the players. From those seats, they looked like little dots in the stadium, and she didn't know the rules of the game anyway. She sighed, silently wishing she could understand her American friend's fascination with sports. Lucas sat back down and brushed the golden strands of just-washed hair out of his face.

"Aren't you enjoying the game, Liza? You look confused."

"Oh, no, it's fine... umm... go Sharks...!" She pumped her fist in the air and gave Lucas a nervous grin.

"See that fighting over there? Looks like those Old Court boys are pissed their star quarterback plays like a middle-schooler." he said, pointing to a crowded spot near one of Warren Stadium's exits. Dozens of students and citizens had gathered around a cluster of people trading blows, and Liza's eyes opened wide as a boy limped away from the melee with a bleeding neck and missing teeth.

"Oh... I-I think he's been cut! Lucas!"

Lucas wrapped his arm around Liza's shoulder. "Woah! Hey, somebody call the police!"

The players even stopped in their tracks, with the referee calling a timeout to deal with the fighting crowd at the north end of the stadium. It spilled out from the stands and right onto the field, and there was no mercy on the injured and bleeding. Liza caught a brief glimpse of a man with his flesh peeling away, greying from putrefaction and necrosis. He looked like a walking corpse, and he bent down to bite and strip flesh from the arm of a student with a Sharks jersey.

Liza gasped and pressed herself against Lucas, and soon they were stuck in the throng of many other bodies in a hurried and confused attempt to vacate the stadium. The roar of the crowd was not the voices of cheering, but thousands of heated remarks and insults.

"Of course those Old Court assholes don't have any manners, they raise wild animals over there!"

"What the fuck is going on?"

"It's like something out of a Playstation game!"

Making use of his tall and heavy frame, Lucas gently pushed aside the static shamblers and drew his car keys from his pocket. "Things are getting so freaky... and what are all these dumbasses doing just standing around? Ain't they seen a stadium riot before?" he muttered, practically dragging Liza down the steps to the southern exit.

Liza scraped the heel of her boot against the concrete in some attempt to reach the ground again. "Lucas! You're squeezing me! Oooh!"

The tall student coughed and set her on the ground with a soft _click_, and ruffled his own hair out of nervous habit. "Oh, sorry."

Liza shook her head and pointed to the northern entrance. Police were flooding into the stadium, dozens of RPD officers with their batons out and cuffs ready. It was a quick response at any rate, but the carnage wasn't over yet. Lucas took the opportunity to rush out of the southern entrance, to waiting emergency crews and police cars. Other people fleeing the stadium provided ample cover for Lucas to bring Liza to the car, where they climbed inside and slammed the doors shut.

"Listen, we're gonna get back to the campus and just forget about this mess... you still good for pizza, Liza?"

The girl nods and Lucas turns the key in the ignition slot. Behind those thick-rimmed glasses, her brown eyes glistened with tears.

"Liza, what's wrong?"

She felt dizzy, as if standing in an enormous tank of water with no lights on. She knew what she saw. A shambling, rotting horror, with an insatiable hunger for fresh, living flesh. The car started to roll out of the parking lot and onto Raccoon Street, towards the Raccoon University campus.


	2. Raccoon University

**-1: It's Not Over-**

Lucas took the keys out of the ignition. "Well, we're back... the hell's going on over here...?"

Liza, who was jarred awake by the sudden stop, slowly peeled her eyes open for a look outside the window. Much like in the stadium, the students on the Raccoon University campus seemed to be embroiled in some kind of fight or flight situation. At the side door to the chemistry hall, a boy from Lucas's baseball team burst through with patches of his skin missing. His face contorted into an agonized snarl, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

"Wait right here..." said Lucas, slamming the door shut to keep Liza safe. She watched as he approached his teammate, and they talked about something, which she couldn't hear through the closed windows.

Liza rolled hers down a finger's width, and she heard the echoes of strange, droning noises. She couldn't pick up any of the things Lucas and his friend were saying, but his bleeding friend knit his brows and started gesturing wildly at the doors. He leaned against the window to one of the chemistry labs, and slumped to the ground. Lucas shook his head and returned to the car, bent down and peering in at Liza through the passenger window.

"Alright, there was just some psycho running around the chemistry hall biting people... they've got him cuffed in the Dean's office and they're waiting on police, but we should be fine. So, still on for pizza?" He tapped his fingers impatiently on the roof of the car.

Liza nodded and pulled the lock open, and Lucas opened the door and took her hand to help her out of the car. Her hand felt cold and clammy in her fur-trimmed red suede glove.

"You're really starting to worry me, Liza... you're doing that thing where you don't talk..."

She shook her head and made some gestures, one of the only ways she typically communicated with strangers. She attempted to tell him she was fine and just shaken up by the events at the game, but neither of them knew sign language and Liza didn't have her 'talk-pad'—a notebook and pen she used when her voice didn't work. In some cases, only Lucas could get her to say anything, and he would speak for her.

"It's okay, you can stay in my dorm tonight if you want. Tomorrow's Friday, it'll all blow over by then. 'Kay?"

She sighed and nodded, knowing there were unfortunate implications to a star athlete taking a petite Armenian girl back to his dorm. Dense-headed Lucas didn't seem to mind, and it steadied her nerves to know he wouldn't be bothered by it. They'd order pizza, like every other Thursday night, she'd help him study trig and composition, and on Friday they'd spend the first half of the day at the mall for a treat and some shopping.

He walked with his hand in hers, and stopped at the solid, reinforced red door to the second floor common room in the west wing. Liza's eyes darted to the window overlooking the courtyard, which cleared and calmed down. Lucas's friend was still bleeding against the wall, and paramedics and police were nowhere to be seen.

Lucas pulled Liza inside by the hand, but didn't take a step until she moved herself. Michael and Thomas, two regular fixtures of Lucas's clique, stood around the small television set watching the evening news.

"Hey guys, what's up? No _Friends_ tonight?"

Thomas turned his head. "Oh, no, Friends is still coming on, it's just major networks are down... so all it is is local news."

"Bummer."

The next story came on. The anchor rolled footage of injured football game attendees and recapped the grim situation at the stadium, using words like "riot" and "bloodbath". _It was more than just some mere riot_, Liza thought, _that guy with the missing skin was trying to eat people in the stands_. Though, "bloodbath" was a perfect way to describe it after the photographs of the aftermath scrolled by. Two people died in the incident, splayed out clearly over the railing with blood trickling down their arms and dyeing their white Thunders T-shirts a striking crimson.

Liza held her stomach. The images, and the memories of witnessing what led to it seemed dreamlike. And yet here it was on the evening news at 6, in her real life, a dream that she could not wake up from. Her stomach felt like a trash bag full of chunky, rancid liquid in the summer.

Lucas pulled a bottle of water from the cooler and wrapped it in Liza's hands. "You look tired. Come on, no more of this news. We're safe now, alright?"

"U-uh huh..." Liza was surprised her voice returned. Still, she sounded hoarse.

She sat at the edge of Lucas's bed as he retrieved her pad from a sturdy-looking cherrywood desk, with his computer and a box for a Soundblaster AWE64 that Liza helped him install earlier that year. "Pizza Hut, or Domino's?"

She scribbled out something on the pad and presented it to him. Her handwriting curved and letters ran into each other in a cursive-like form, but Lucas found it easily readable in comparison to his all-capitals chickenscratch he used for notes.

_[I'm not that hungry, the sauce will just remind me of the blood in the stadium.]_

Lucas cupped his elbow and stroked the rugged blonde stubble on his chin. "But you have to get your nutrition, Liza... Want some pasta, then? Oh, God damnit... I mean, you know, some spaghetti and some olive oil and a little cheese and basil... or some pesto sauce..."

She giggled and covered her mouth, and wrote another message for him.

_[Sure!]_

He sighed and wiped his brow with his thick trunk of a forearm. Lucas seemed to have a knack for saying the wrong thing sometimes. "Right, I'll be back in a bit then... I need to borrow some olive oil from Tiffany..."

He pulled his coat on and flicked the button on his personal TV set for Liza. "Just try to enjoy yourself. I'll be back as soon as possible, and there's Tom and Mike here if you need help with anything."

Liza struggled and wriggled on the edge of his bed, groaning and straining. "Oooh... b-be careful please... what if you don't come back...?"

"I'm sure I will. But if something happens or I get caught by police for some reason, just get to the cafeteria and pick up some dinner, 'kay? I'll go there first thing if I'm out for too long, and then I'll be here." he said, rubbing her cheek and giving her a reassuring smile. "There's no need to worry. And I'm glad you're feeling better, everyone loves it when you talk."

"Really?"

"I'm sure." He stuffed his wallet in his pocket, and scooped up a package of gum to trade with Tiffany. That girl ran through the stuff.

As he left, Liza poked her head out the dorm window for a look at the courtyard, and Lucas's injured friend left a trail of red splatters on the ground. He scratched himself and shambled, looking pale and shambling clumsily along... like the living dead.

* * *

**-1.5: Abandoned-**

Liza woke to the sound of knocking on Lucas's door. She peeled out of her coat and boots earlier that evening, leaving them draped over and beside his computer chair. The window let in a whistling gust, with the droning sound from earlier carried on it like some grisly message. It was louder, a low roar of many angry and pained voices all crying out at once.

The knock came again, the sound of a bony palm slapping against the hollow-core door. Liza leapt from the plush bed and thick quilted covers and jerked the knob. Her shoulders and hopes fell when she saw Michael at the door, and not Lucas. The clock on the desk read 8:37, roughly an hour and a half after Lucas left.

"Hey Liza, I'm sorry Lucas isn't back, but we've got a problem. And this is kinda related to Lucas being missing..."

Liza tilted her head and cupped her chin.

"Well, Tom went out to look for him... he hasn't come back either. I can't call anyone because the phone lines are out, and there's all these crazy noises outside. Downtown's a mess, too... sheesh. I've been hearing sirens all over the damn place." He sounds a little slower than normal, probably from fatigue.

Liza noted he kept scratching his neck the entire time.

"Oh, uhh, sorry, I should have let you get dressed..." he said, backing away into the pool of dim yellow light in the common room.

She pulled on her gloves and her coat, and zipped up the knee-high suede boots. She tried to cough back her worry—they were a gift from Lucas, bought to "make her feel more like a trendy socialite", as he put it. For all her smart dress, it didn't help her anxiety around strangers, or her tendency to go mute.

Under the light in the common room, Tom's skin looked pale and dry, flaking around his neck and his knobby hands. His lips looked chapped, and he kept coughing and trying to moisten his mouth by sloshing saliva in it. He sat in the plush red and black striped armchair with his head back, eyes closed in deep meditation. Liza took her pen and her pad and poked his shoulder a few times with the retracted pen tip.

He didn't move, just nudged aside and flopped back like a meaty ragdoll. Her face started to heat up and her cheeks turned pink as she tried a second time. Again, no answer. She stuffed the pen into the spiral binding of the notebook and put her hand on the door to the outside. A chill in her spine made her shudder. Someone screamed, high-pitched and gurgling somewhere on the other side of the door.

"Oh my God! Get him off me! Get him off me!"

The wet noise of tearing meat followed. Liza pressed her ear to the door and heard something smack the floor in the hallway with a heavy thump. A door nearby opened and slammed shut in less than a second. A pair of hands smashed against the next door over, over and over again.

"For fuck's sake, open the door! Open the door, James! Ja-Jaaaah! James! Don't leave me here!"

"I'm sorry, man! I'm not letting that fucking thing in here! I've got food and I've got Stacey, I don't need anything else! Fuck off!"

The voice in the hall pleaded with the man next door. "C-come on! What about that time I took you to J's for your birthday? Didn't that mean anything? How about the U2 concert in St. Louis last year?"

"Fuck! Off!"

The pleas became incoherent, sobbing babble and drew closer to her door. The knock made her jump back.

"L-Lucas...? Mike...? C-can you help a guy out...?"

Liza opened the door. A tall man with spiked out black hair held his hand still in the air. A ragged stump was all that remained of his thumb. Snot dribbled down his lips and he heaved in shivering sobs, eyes red and puffy from tears. Seeing Liza, he wiped his nose on his shirt.

"What're you doing here... where's Mike...? Oh, there he is... hey Mike..."

He stumbled past Liza, pushing her aside to pull on Mike's hand. "Mike, oh thank God for Mike... I know you're takin' a nap, man, but I really appreciate it..."

Liza stepped out into the hall, put off by his disregard for her personal space. Out in the hall, she saw Lucas's friend from earlier, face-down on the wooden floor with patches of his scalp missing. She wanted to puke, seeing the red rim of bleeding flesh around the stark white of his skull. He didn't move, didn't make a sound. She carefully stepped around his body, and gasped when she saw his gaze following her on her way past.

He scrunched his torso to the side and reached for her leg, missing her ankle for her heel from her startled jump. "Wah!"

He picked his head up and revealed a set of sharpened, rotting teeth amongst pockmarked and blackened gums. A low moan gurgled out of his throat and he pulled himself forward to bite, almost throwing Liza off balance.

"Ah! H-help...!" she cried, but her soft voice barely carried even in those echoing halls. _I have no choice_, she thought, yanking her boot from his grasp. Her foot came down and the thick wooden heel crushed part of his open jaw, rendering the unfeeling corpse-man at least somewhat disarmed.

Still he crawled after her on his arms and struggling with one leg, but Liza was moving at a dead run. His moan wasn't the only one in the halls of Raccoon University, and the sound of her heels making hard clicks on the wooden floor drew pounding from the closed doors to the dorm common rooms. Liza gripped the banister and almost threw herself down the first turn of the stairwell as her eyes locked with a small crowd of five or six pale shamblers, arms out over the banister. She heard a retching sound and a wet splatter behind her, and turned to see a pool of steaming vomit trickling off the steps and dripping off the upper banister in thick, chunky strands.

Liza held her hand to her mouth and quickened her pace, rushing down the corner steps and into the first floor hall and a throng of screaming students tripping over each other trying to escape packs of their drooling, necrotic classmates and teachers. She hopped over the back step and out the door into the courtyard, still empty and dead as before. Lucas's car was still in the lot... and the streets choked with piles of crashed cars.

Smoke and towering flames roiled and spilled into the cloudy darkness of the night sky, with the screams and moans of thousands of agonized souls swirling and echoing amidst the crack of gunfire.

* * *

** -Author's Notes-**

_-A bit of research went into this chapter; a calendar of September 1998, a list of U2 concert tours and dates, and a lineup of Sound Blaster cards from creative (I admit to that being knowledge I already had for the most part—though originally Lucas was going to have a Soundblaster 16 card installed in his PC.)_

_-The timeline of events should be pretty accurate to the game series. I know it inside and out, but having a timeline open with events and locations I can reference has only helped._

_-As this is a story of _**real survival/horror**_, you shouldn't expect Liza to try to fight off any attackers—particularly zombified professors or acquaintances. More importantly, the liberties I've taken with the setting includes limiting the presence of firearms in random places. I mean... how often do you really find random guns sitting around in real life? I'm sure a lot of fics would have a gun on the table, or a hidden one in Lucas's possession._

_-Let me know if you have an original character that you would like to make a cameo appearance, as long as they fit with the setting. For instance, UBCS don't arrive until Saturday, 26 September. So they wouldn't appear in the story until that day comes._


End file.
